The Swing
Fingertips just tipping you would send you Every bit as far – once you got going – As a big push in the back. Sooner or later, We all learned one by one to go sky high, Backward and forward in the open shed, Toeing and Rowing and jack-knifing through air. * Not Fragonard. Nor Brueghel. It was more Hans Memling’s light of heaven off green grass, Light over fields and hedges, the shed-mouth Sunstruck and expectant, the bedding-straw Piled to one side, like a Nativity Foreground and background waiting for the figures. And then, in the middle ground, the swing itself With an old lopsided sack in the loop of it, Perfectly still, hanging like pulley-slack, A lure let down to tempt the soul to rise. * Even so, we favoured the earthbound. She Sat there as majestic as an empress Steeping her swollen feet one at a time In the enamel basin, feeding it Every now and again with an opulent Steaming arc from a kettle on the floor Beside her. The plout of that was music To our ears, her smile a mitigation. Whatever light the goddess had once shone Around her favourite coming from the bath Was what was needed then: there should have been Fresh linen, ministrations by attendants, Procession and amazement. Instead, she took Each rolled elastic stocking and drew it on Like the life she would not fail and was not Meant for. And once, when she’d scoured the basin, She came and sat to please us on the swing, Neither out of place nor in her element, Just tempted by it for a moment only, Half-retrieving something half-confounded. Instinctively we knew to let her be. * To start up by yourself, you hitched the rope Against your backside and backed on into it Until it tautened, then tiptoed and drove off As hard as possible. You hurled a gathered thing From the small of your own back into the air. Your head swept low, you heard the whole shed creak. * We all learned one by one to go sky high. Then townlands vanished into aerodromes, Hiroshima made light of human bones, Concorde’s neb migrated towards the future. So who were we to want to hang back there In spite of all? In spite of all, we sailed Beyond ourselves and over and above The rafters aching in our shoulderblades, The give and take of branches in our arms Context A sequence evoking a time, a place and family. In the 1940s, a large open shed in the rural farmyard in Northern Ireland; brothers and sisters, Heaney talks about the ‘herd life’ and ‘sofa in the forties,’ and their mother using the swing in the family barn. Heaney is able to swing between the extraordinary/commonplace, heavenly/earthly, Idealism/reality. Learning to swing is a metaphor for living a successful life. Reference to artists Fragonard: Too idealised, too ‘Romantic.’ Breugel: Too harsh, brutal and impersonal Memling: Exhibits a greater whimsy, yet grounded in a rural romance. Sense of the spiritual and key elements of family. Action 1st stanza Establishes the place and setting. However moment remains in a state of flux, it is simultaneously the now, the before and the tomorrow. It is past tense however the movement established by ‘Heaney’, the ‘toeing and rowing and jack-knifing through air…’ and time, eludes to the transient nature of the swing. It is a constant within the poem. (and because the peom can be seen as analogous for Heaney’s childhood, within Heaney’s life as well, the repetition of ‘you’ eludes to personal experience) 2nd Stanza Establishlol noe of the swing and scene (is it majestic in reality or only in his memories?) this is conveyed through the shed-mouth sunstruck and expected. The mood shifts as the Heaney focus’ on the danger that I associated with the swing. 3rd Stanza The poem becomes grounded in the female form. Again Heaney’s adoration of the female form comes to the fore. Heaney emphasizes the sacrifice his mother made to help him ‘swing high.’ 4th Stanza There is a sense of regret, a sombre tone – ‘there should have been…like the life she would not fail and was not meant for.’ – ‘in her element’ – ‘half retrieving something’ – ‘we knew to let her be.’ The women is there to please the speaker, ‘please us on the swing.’ The sacrifice Heaney is reflecting on what his mother did to help him be successful. 5th Stanza Heaney describes the feeling of swinging, and the process. This can be taken as a metaphor for success. 6th Stanza There is a time shift, described through the horrors of exhilaration. Heaney comments on the futility of human success. Juxtaposing his own swing success with the death of thousands. Perhaps putting it into perspective individual success, whilst commenting on the danger of progress and success . The stanza is very reflective. Involves enjambment to question and respond. “In spite of all we sailed.’ SymbolismBig butsWithin the poem the swing stays the same but the individuals riding it change. Within the poem Heaney is able to descend into his own history and the history of the world around him. Within ‘The Swing’ he is able to outline the significance of individual achievement while demonstrating its insignificance. The mother is ‘majestic as an empress… tempted by’ the swing for ‘a moment.’ Yet the candid nature of the moment is lost to ‘concorde’s neb.’ Heaney suggests that these moments, our success are enjoy by but few people, yet are no less important.